All classes in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, explained

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is already closing in on its release window. If you’re going to save Thedas again, you’ll need abilities to help you out in the fight. That’s where classes come into play.

The core classes available in The Veilguard won’t come as a surprise to long-time Dragon Age fans. But for players who haven’t played BioWare’s dark fantasy RPG series before, the limited number might be confusing and even disappointing at first. Don’t worry—there’s far more to the class system than just the number of core classes available to you in character creation.

All classes in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Just like in previous Dragon Age titles, there are three core classes in The Veilguard: Warrior, Mage, and Rogue. These are more like starting points for your character’s class, however. As you progress throughout the game, you’ll be able to unlock and build on specialization skill trees for your Rook (the name given to your character), giving you the freedom to customize your class and effectively build your own subclasses.

The Warrior

The Warrior class should be fairly familiar to most gamers: Warriors like to use weapons such as swords, shields, and beefier two-handed weapons to hit bad guys. Often front-line characters that like to get into close-quarters combat, a Warrior in your party is usually great for putting some defense in between enemies and your squishier characters.

Of course, you’ll be able to customize exactly what type of Warrior you’d like your Rook to be as you progress through the game. Inquisition allowed Warriors to become sword-and-shield defensive experts, barbarian-like whirlwinds, and even holy knights with magical abilities. We’d expect more of the same from The Veilguard, even if the game’s official specializations haven’t been revealed yet.

The Mage

True to their name, Mages focus on wielding magic with their staff attacks and abilities. There are plenty of elemental damage types you can further spec your mage into with specializations, as well. Just take the companion Neve, who uses ice magic in the game’s first gameplay trailer.

In Inquisition, players could build on fire, ice, lightning, and spirit skill trees, and also could unlock more specializations as they progressed further into the game. What type of mage will you build?

The Rogue

Ah, Rogues. The quippy, flippy, stabby characters are near and dear to my heart, as the first Dragon Age character I ever created was a Rogue. Experts with knives, bow and arrow, and setting traps or dishing out a little poison with a weapon hit, Rogues can be some of the heaviest-hitting damage dealers your party has, even if they’re not as tanky as the Warrior typically is.

Specializations for the Rogue in The Veilguard are still yet to be confirmed, but Inquisition let you build a Rogue that picked off enemies from afar with a bow and laid traps to prevent them from getting to close as easily as you could make a blade dancer that cloaked themselves in elemental fury as they went. Quick and stylish, Rogues are always a good time.